Broken Ties
by little princess
Summary: COMPLETE A few years after the war, Quatre reflects on the other pilots and comes to the conclusion he does not belong. And he is only the first to want out. chap 5 of 5 up
1. Invitation Out

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing

Title: Broken Ties  
  
Author: little princess  
  
Archive: fanfiction.net mediaminer.og my personal website and GWFF yahoo group  
  
Rating: PG13  
  
Warnings: Friendship fic and I guess Angst. Talk about loved ones death in the last chapter yet not really a death fic I guess.  
  
Pairings: it's a friendship fic, no real pairings, just the mention in later chapters that they moved on and got married (non-yaoi) to OC's who don't play a big part here.  
  
Summary: At the end of Endless Waltz, we are left not knowing what will happen to the gw boys. In this version, they remain friends for a couple of years, but in the end, their friendship seems to die like most friendships you have at such a young age do.  
  
Author's note: This story was written by me after the last of my final exams, June 3rd, 2004. A few days after I started writing this, I got two women at the counter in the supermarket I work whom obviously hadn't seen each other for years, but now ran into each other again and they left my sight, deciding to go for a cup of coffee together before they went home. I wrote this story, thinking about all the people I met these past six years and whom I would most likely never see again. Here I think back on the people I have spent all that time in high school with, wondering which of them I will still be speaking to ten years from now. It is not a happy fic as it is about friendships that seem so strong at one point, but won't last forever in the end.

_Dedicated to all the students who graduated high school in 2004, especially those from that little country in Europe where I'm from, though I doubt any of them will read it._

* * *

**BROKEN TIES  
**  
Invitation Out  
  
I've always felt I was different from the others. I knew it from the day I met the first of them. It wasn't so much his attitude that made me feel uncomfortable at my own mansion, it was more the fact that I felt and witnessed he was keeping any emotions from showing up in his voice or face. Of course, Trowa was never one for much expression, but still, it kind of unnerved me then.  
  
I saw the way he eyed the Maganacs, the way he looked at the house and every room we entered as if it was a sin to have a place so big, as if any moment trap doors could open or the ground would swallow him and I would be looking down on him, laughing at how he'd fooled himself. I could feel his disapproval but, unsure of whether I was completely on his side or not, he never uttered a word about it. He barely said anything anyway.  
  
I used to hate everyone I met, that was when I was young and way before I knew the truth behind my birth. When I first encountered the Maganacs, they, too, saw me as nothing but a spoiled brat, who could suit their purposes just fine. And I was a spoiled brat, honestly. I came from a rich family, got everything I wanted, never played with other children my age and still I was unhappy and angry about something all the time.  
  
The Maganacs were the ones who changed all that, Rashid showed me what I was really worth and they had faith in me, a kind of faith I still don't think I deserve. They worked miracles, turning a spoiled brat into a boy loyal to his believes and his friends, a boy who no longer needed to hide his thoughts and emotions behind anger. I am forever in their debt.  
  
But even though the Maganacs made a fighter out of me, I am still nothing like the others. For one, I am rich while they have nothing. Duo is the complete opposite of me on that point. Non of them had much money, at least not nearly a percent of what I had, but Duo had no money at all, never had it before either. He grew up on the streets, stealing, fighting, hating everything I was and still am. Oh, he never showed me that, he never did say a word about my wealth or the fact that I had gained it just by being born, he hid every trace of it but yet I knew it was there.  
  
The way he walked around my place, not that time in the village after Heero's self-detonation, but the other time he spent at my place. When he thought I wasn't around, he would pace the rooms, count the steps from the door to the wall and frown, lost in his own thoughts. And even when he entered a room I was in, he walked too casually, hands behind his back, grinning as if the space of it made him feel like he was outside, free. Duo wasn't used to wealth and so whenever he got a taste of it, he acted like the stereotype rich guy, propping his feet up on the table, relaxing in a leather chair that was so expensive, he could have survived on the money for months if it had been spent on him instead of on the chair.  
  
It hurt, to see him act like that.  
  
But I never said a word.  
  
Another thing that made me so different from the others was the fact that I had a family. Wufei'd had a family, or at least people he grew up with, but when his colony was destroyed, so was everything and everyone he knew. When my father died, I had 29 sisters and a lot of Maganacs, whom I considered family as well, to fall back on. But for Wufei all those people, everybody with whom he'd shared his morals, his believes, his life were gone.  
  
In the end, Trowa was the only one besides me who had something like a family left. Catherine and him were like brother and sister, I heard that there was even a chance that they were siblings for real as well. But Trowa never bothered to find out. He was content with the way things were and even if she turned out to his real sister, what would change? He would still be the same, she would still be the same, why hope for something that may not be when you can pretend that it is?  
  
Out of the four of them, during the war I felt most comfortable around Heero. Strange as it may sound, most people tend to run away from him, I liked it when he was around. When he was at one of my mansions, he looked around, checking for the best and fastest exits and not looking at how big it was or what was there or how much money was spent on it. Maybe it was because he was somewhat close to Relena, or maybe because he was most realistic and understood that just because I was rich, didn't mean that I was incapable of fighting, but he seemed least condemning about the circumstances under which I lived, he just seemed to accept it like the others couldn't.  
  
He'd had his reservations about me too, but he was sceptical of anyone. He always had that air about him that told me he refused to get close to anyone, just in case that one ended up turning against him or in a situation where he had to die for 'the greater good'. It was a smart choice he made, especially seeing how Trowa's acceptance of me as 'that kind boy' nearly killed him in the end. Duo, Wufei, they would have tried to talk me out of it as well, giving me time to hurt them, but Heero didn't. He knew what he had to do and the distance he'd kept between him and me was enough to not be bothered by whom I once was. He knew he might have to kill me and was ready to do it.  
  
Yet I am different from Heero as well. I couldn't get close to him, but I wrongly assumed it was because of the threat called war. So when he didn't change towards me, when he changed so much when it came to Duo and even towards the others, that came as an even greater shock than I should have allowed it to be. I wanted so badly to be accepted by him that I had justified his behaviour during the war simply by the fact that he was raised as a soldier. If he was capable of letting that act go, if even the slightest bit, around others, then why not around me? What had I done to him to make him so distrustful?  
  
What had I done to any of them to make me untrustworthy?  
  
The Marimeilla incident is now almost five years ago, Christmas is coming up. I was the one who risked my life to get their gundams back when they were about to be destroyed by the sun, I have fought just as hard as any of them back then, I have made mistakes, I've shown I am no less human than any of them, I have seen just as much, suffered like they have, maybe even more than some of them because I did have people close to me who got killed. I piloted a gundam, I've been captured, I've more than once faced my own death, I killed no less than they had and I felt the same emotions I knew they were feeling deep down inside.  
  
Yet I did not get invited for their private Christmas celebration held at Relena's place this year. I knew they were all going to be there, Heero, Duo Trowa, Wufei and Relena of course. And I also knew they didn't know I knew, I'd been hacking their mail because I had to know whether it was true, whether I was truly left out and the evidence had been there.  
  
Relena must've guessed the boys would invite me and they must've figured I was on Relena's guest list anyway, right?  
  
Wrong.  
  
Oh, I'm probably just fooling myself. Why would they want that rich bastard over? He had enough business partners to celebrate with and if not, there were always the sisters or the Maganacs he could go to, why bother invite him?  
  
I might look like them, be twenty-one, the same age as them and have fought the same war as them, I might have changed my lifestyle like them to one where the only real fighting was verbally, but to them, I'm different.  
  
I wonder if they'll miss me at Christmas, I wonder how they will react. Yet I know it will only hurt me more. After Christmas, to save myself, I must break with them. I am too different, they can't live with me and I can't keep in contact with people when it is so obvious they can't live with me.  
  
In a few days, I shall give them my farewell.  
  
_Quatre Rebarba Winner. Pilot 04 of Sandrock  
  
AC 201, December 20th._


	2. Follow The Leader

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing  
  
Title: Broken Ties  
  
Author: little princess  
  
Archive: fanfiction.net mediaminer.og my personal website and GWFF yahoo group  
  
Rating: PG13  
  
Warnings: Friendship fic and I guess Angst. Talk about loved ones death in the last chapter yet not really a death fic I guess.  
  
Pairings: it's a friendship fic, no real pairings, just the mention in later chapters that they moved on and got married (non-yaoi) to OC's who don't play a big part here.  
  
Summary: At the end of Endless Waltz, we are left not knowing what will happen to the gw boys. In this version, they remain friends for a couple of years, but in the end, their friendship seems to die like most friendships you have at such a young age do.

* * *

Follow The Leader  
  
It took me an hour before I finally voiced the words. "Who _did _invite him?"  
  
It had been a nice day for the time of the year, weather wasn't that bad, a few drops perhaps on the face of the earth, but besides that, it wasn't bad. It was a couple degrees above 0 and a good day to do some last-minute Christmas shopping, like I had to do. I was always like that when it came to buying gifts, waiting until I could really not postpone it any longer. I hated buying gifts for any occasion.  
  
I arrived at the well-decorated place at six-twenty-seven –we had all agreed to be there by six-thirty– carrying a bag in which I had put 5 wrapped-up Christmas gifts. I looked up at the huge place I had visited a few times before, but had never seen so beautiful. For a private party, Relena had really gone out of her way to organise things.  
  
Christmas decorations hung all over the fore-front, little lights placed an accent on the outlines of the building as well as on all the doors and windowsills, green leaves seemed to be pasted everywhere against the building, two of the windows, in a symmetric position, had a green banner hanging down, showing that it was Christmas we celebrated. Mistletoe hung above the front door –the butler must've loved that idea– and the huge pine tree in front f the house was decorated with red and golden decorative, Christmas balls, Christmas lights, Christmas bells, anything you could stick in a tree was there, in the colours red and gold.  
  
I rang the doorbell and turned back to stare amazingly at the tree. It was already pretty dark outside, so the lights lit everything up beautifully. I figured the whole picture would look coming straight off a postcard if only it was midnight and the stars shone a bit brighter than they did today.  
  
I didn't even hear the door open, but whet I heard a cough behind me I whirled around and came face-to-face with the stiff butler in his usual black suit. Relena's old butler, Percy... Parmon... Pagit... or whatever his name was, retired four years ago, but even though I'd only met him so few times, I'd always liked the cheery guy. At least he was up to a conversation. This guy, with his brown hair always combed flat, his brown eyes, always watching you even after you closed the door on him, his lips always drawn into a thin line, his big nose always standing out, nostrils flaring every now and then, this guy was plain scary.  
  
I looked up at him, for he was taller than me and even slimmer than Trowa –okay, that was just the muscles Trowa had that this guy lacked, but still. I used to be very small when I was a little boy, mostly due to my circumstances, I figured. And though it always helped me getting by on the streets, I didn't like it one bit. I wanted to be big, like Solo, so older boys would be afraid of me instead of laugh at me. So, when I started to grow in my puberty and I grew fast, I was pretty happy with that fact, only to loose that joy around the age of sixteen, when I stopped growing at the height of only 162 centimetres. Even Wufei was taller than I was! It sucks being small.  
  
Anyway, the butler. He was older than we were, but with his twenty-eight, still pretty young. I didn't like him very much, his grim face aside. I didn't know how much Relena had let him in on us, but he always seemed to look down on any of the boys who ever visited Relena, as if we were filth in the household he leaded. Of course, that was less when the visitor went by the name of Winner, but still I caught him scowling at Quatre as well.  
  
He raised an eyebrow as I stared at him, waiting for him to let me in. I gritted my teeth silently as I realised he pretended not to know me, and I kept myself from following my feelings and punch him in the gut.  
  
"Duo Maxwell, here for Relena's private Christmas party."  
  
The man finally stepped aside and as I entered, I remembered the mistletoe and grinned. This was one way to get back at him for treating me like this. Before he knew what happened, I'd pushed myself onto my toes and planted a kiss on the beardless cheek. Then I walked on, grinning, fighting another urge, this time the one to wipe my lips as I walked trough the door.  
  
I put my hand in the air as in waving at him in a dismissive way. "Don't worry, I know where to go!"  
  
It took several seconds before I heard the door slam shut and several more before footsteps moved away from me.  
  
I wasn't the last one to arrive, at six-thirty-one, the doorbell rang and there was Trowa. For some reason, that guy was always late. However, he wasn't the only one who was late. Quatre usually arrived at least ten minutes before time, yet at six-forty-five he wasn't there yet and at seven, when dinner was supposed to be served, he had yet to arrive and we were starting to get worried. Quatre was a big boy, we were sure he could look after himself, but this was very uncharacteristic of him, the least he could've done was call us and say he'd be late.  
  
Relena sent word to the kitchen to try and hold the food until the last of us arrived. The presents under the Christmas tree were lying patiently, waiting until after dinner to be unpacked. We were really starting to worry now, as we all agreed it had been clear that half past six had been the agreed time.  
  
Dinner was served twenty-five minutes later anyway, the cooks complaining that if we waited any longer, it would be spoiled. But before we started dinner, I was beginning to wonder, I had heard Heero talk to Relena about the other boys accepting the invitation, but had I heard Quatre's name? I couldn't recall it, but then I couldn't recall the mention of Quatre at any time...  
  
Then I finally voiced those words. "Who did invite him?"  
  
All their eyes were on me for a moment and then Wufei turned to Relena. "You sent my invitation, didn't you?"  
  
"I had two cards laying around," the blonde spoke, "so I sent them to you and Trowa and asked Heero to invite the others."  
  
Heads turned to Heero. "You sent it to Trowa?" He asked her, as if not believing her. "Why send a card to Trowa when you're closer with Quatre as business partners?"  
  
"That's just it!" Relena said matter-of-factly. "We're business partners and the card was too personal to send to a business partner."  
  
"So..." I began slowly, "you're saying Trowa got a card and an e-mail invitation while Quatre got neither?" This brought a silence to the table, broken by me. "Fuck!"  
  
"That about sums it up." Wufei answered. Trowa was already on his feet, going for the nearest phone.  
  
"What are you doing, Trowa? He's probably having Christmas somewhere else by now." I walked up to the tallest of us, figuring that if he were anything to Quatre on the phone as he was with me, t would not help the situation. See, Trowa tended to assume people understood looks rather than words. He would probably say something like 'we're at Relena's place having dinner' and then he'd just try and will Quatre to understand he was supposed to come celebrate with us. _If _the boy was within reach, that was.  
  
But Trowa was right, we had to apologise to our fellow-pilot and it was best done now and not tomorrow, even if he had gone somewhere else to celebrate. We tried his cell-phone first, but he didn't pick it up. On good luck we tried his home number where Darla, a woman in her thirties who worked for Quatre, picked it up. She told us Quatre was in his privet quarters and if we would hang on while she connected us trough. Soon enough, a pale face –even for Quatre's doing– appeared on the screen.  
  
"Hello, Duo, Trowa." He said almost as if he had been expecting us to call. The others kept out of sight until we had told him what was going on.  
  
What I figured would happen if Trowa did this by himself, happened. "We're having a Christmas dinner at Relena's place." I could slap him for his bluntness.  
  
"Really?" Quatre said, sounding just a little bit too surprised to me. "I didn't know."  
  
Quatre was a good liar. He could always get away with telling Oz everything back in the war, he could have told them about giant ants mutating into mobile suits that looked like gundams and then claiming his innocence and make the story believable. He could tell any of his business associates anything he wanted to get them to do as he wished, but after being friends with a guy for years, you get to recognise the signs sooner or later. After six years, I could see right trough him. I didn't know about the others, but I knew I could. And I saw he had been hurt.  
  
He refused to come over, even after I explained the situation, saying he had work to do and he had already eaten anyway.  
  
"Working on Christmas eve? Come one, Quatre, you can't do that to yourself!"  
  
He just shrugged and muttered something about work is time and time is money or some shit like that. Like he hadn't enough money already. Skipping one evening wouldn't make him go bankrupt!  
  
"Then at least come and open the presents we've got for you."  
  
"I can't Duo." Quatre, lied. "You can send them over here if you like, but I didn't get you anything. I'm sorry." His voice sounded apologetic, but his look was too formal for me to believe it. However, if he didn't want to come, we couldn't make him.  
  
We sent Quatre his gifts, but we never received as much as a note back. Soon enough the only times we saw or heard about him was trough television or Relena who still had some business relations with him. For weeks afterwards I mentally kicked myself for not seeing it. Quatre had been acting strange since a few months prior to that Christmas. He had been too friendly with me and every time I'd asked him how he was he had said he was good, he was fine, though I knew that once every now and then he had his mental down-time where he remembered the war and needed someone to talk to. He came to me for that and to me only but I never forced him into anything. So when he stopped coming after all these years I guess I just hoped he was getting over things, that I so wanted to believe he was indeed fine as he said he was, that I was foolish enough to forget to look beyond that mask he wore so easily.  
  
I should have tried to keep in contact with him after that December, I knew I should have, but unconsciously I started to follow his example. For quite a while now I had felt as if I didn't belong. Actually, I think this all started those four years ago when Relena's dear butler Pagrin retired and was replaced by this 'dazzling youth' as I had once heard a woman in her late forties call him. It was easy to see how he looked down on me and slowly, that guy began to affect me.  
  
I began to realise what others had again, like I had done in my early youth. I saw what Relena and Quatre had even though we were the same age and had fought the same war. I knew they couldn't've chosen their childhood any more than I could've, but still, I began to notice what I'd tried so hard not to see during the war. We had to fight together back then, but we no longer had to, we just had to be friends.  
  
Next thing I saw was how well Wufei seemed to have made it. He got a great job at the preventors, working with Sally Po who was not only his boss, but his close friend and sister figure as well. She helped him get over the war and in a way I guess he helped her as well. I saw how good he had it, how, even tough his colony was destroyed and he had nothing to go back to, he managed to survive, make a living when he was only sixteen but already showing than he could take the adult life.  
  
Maybe that was just the way he had been brought up, I don't know. But I envied him for the way he handled things. He was my age, yet he seemed so much more grown up and even his childish rants became less as he accepted the world as it was more and more. I would look at myself in the mirror and see a boy, a teenager, a child who had seen more, done more than the average adult had and I would see myself, knowing at the same time that a normal life would be very hard for me. I was again alone, without guidance of an elder person, the guidance I needed so much. I found it hard to let go of the mask I wore, even when it came to my closest friends and I realised I was not grown up at all. In fact, I still had a long way to go..  
  
Then I'd look at Wufei and see how he had made it, nice job, money he had earned instead of stolen from his victims in the war, how he learned where to go, what to do with his life, how to act around people. I began to realise that Wufei was so different from me, it almost scared me.  
  
Then there was Heero, the so-called perfect soldier. The nickname alone was too much for me to deal with. He couldn't be perfect, no human was perfect, because if anyone else was, then I would have to be able to be that as well. During the war I strived to beat Heero at something, anything, it became like an obsession to me. After the war I found it hard to let that go, but once I realised there was indeed one thing mister perfect was not perfect with, I managed to finally let go of the competitiveness I felt towards him and instead tried to teach him to socialise.  
  
I fucking helped him becoming perfect again!  
  
He opened up to me, if only a little, allowing me near him for more than five minutes, turning his back to me and not find a reflection to watch my every move. He managed to talk a bit, even if it was just about the weather and he worked with Relena and her other chosen guards on her security. Then when he didn't need me anymore to teach him about life without war, a life I only pretended to know, a style I'd learned from watching too much TV, he began seeing me less and less. He started working together with adult Wufei more as the preventors often requested his help with various security issues.  
  
Yeah, I got jealous. That was me, always jealous of what others had. Jealous of Quatre and Relena because they had been born into wealth, Jealous of Wufei, because he had managed to grow up when I was still just a teenager, jealous of Heero because he didn't need me anymore, jealous of Trowa because he had someone who cared for him, no matter what..  
  
Honestly, that woman drove me crazy! She always seemed to keep accusing me of Trowa getting his memory back and joining the war again. It wasn't my fucking fault amnesia doesn't last forever! Yet every time the kid fell silent, she would look at me as if to say 'you did this to him, you scumbag! You caused this, I know where you're from!'  
  
I began to notice more and more as the months turned into years, that I didn't really belong in this little group anymore. The war was over, I'd done my job, I'd helped them win, now I was reduced back to a mere boy who paid his way trough high school and college with money stolen from dead bodies.  
  
It took me four years and Quatre to realise all of this. But I soon decided to follow in his footsteps, you know, starting slowly by simply not being the one to contact others anymore. Quatre was already gone, to my painful surprise, Heero was next, soon followed by Wufei. I kept in contact with Trowa longest as he actually took time to reply to my replies, but one day that ceased as well. Nope, within a year, I had broken with those few people I had counted as friends during some of the hardest times in my life. Now, non of them even knows that tomorrow I will receive my diploma from college. And that the day after I'm moving to America for good to start a new life.  
  
Reminding me of that, I'd better get ready as Duncan and me decided the day we set foot into college that the night before we received those things, we'd get heavily drunk and we'd shave our heads until we were bald as a bowling ball as if paying respect to the youths we left behind. Yup, tonight I'm making peace with my past, the braid is finally coming off and tomorrow I will start my new life as an adult by more than just age.  
  
Goodbye to Duo Maxwell the teenager, hello to the real world that exists today.  
  
_Duo Maxwell, Pilot 02 of Deathscyte.  
  
AC 202 June 28th._


	3. Blind Habbits

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing  
Title: Broken Ties  
Author: little princess  
Archive: fanfiction.net mediaminer.og my personal website and GWFF yahoo group  
Rating: PG13  
Warnings: Friendship fic and I guess Angst. Talk about loved ones death in the last chapter yet not really a death fic I guess.  
Pairings: it's a friendship fic, no real pairings, just the mention that they moved on and got married (non-yaoi) to OC's who don't play a big part here.  
Summary: At the end of Endless Waltz, we are left not knowing what will happen to the gw boys. In this version, they remain friends for a couple of years, but in the end, their friendship seems to die like most friendships you have at such a young age do.

* * *

Blind Habits  
  
Contact between the five of us became less and less after that Christmas where we forgot to invite Winner. I, too, am partially to blame for that, but like any human being, I sought excuses. My work got pretty heavy as we discovered a plot to revive certain mobile suits and it did take us a lot of time to take care of that. However, I see now that this should never have been an excuse to let my friendship with the others become such a thin line, to be broken so easily.  
  
Winner's loss was a shame, but something told me that it had been his choice and I respected that. He had become distant over the past year anyway, always smiling, telling us the good part of his life while he left out things that went less than good. He used to be concerned when someone wrote lies or something bad about his company or himself, but lately he had been getting an attitude where he didn't seem to care. I thought he was just starting to grow into the hard business man he'd have to be if he wanted to keep his company up for the next fifty years or so.  
  
But it wasn't that what was going on. Maybe somewhere deep down I realised it already, but as Winner and Maxwell were the ones who kept up the contacts, I didn't want to bother about it, figuring that Maxwell would be able to pull the blonde pilot back. Even after that Christmas I trusted Maxwell to make things right again, with his jester mask and his ever- cheerful optimism. Hell, even being captured by Oz didn't seem half as bad as it really was when Maxwell was there.  
  
That was one compliment I had to give the annoying boy, he knew how to play his part. Like that time in outer space when we were captured and I was starting to be convinced that Barton had gone over the enemy. There had been a silent communication between pilot zerotwo and zerothree that I had missed, after which Maxwell conveniently gave Barton an opening to prove to the enemy that he was on their side while he gave us those updates on our gundams.  
  
That was one clever bastard, Maxwell, even if he didn't look it. And so I counted on him to bring Winner back into our circle.  
  
I realised, of course, that Maxwell was starting to mail me less and less. How could I not see it? Until recently he took pleasure in mailing me bombs that would overload my mailbox or other stupid jokes I did not appreciate and referred to as 'childish'. Yet, when the ridiculous trips he'd planned for us, which we never really took anyway, and the occasional photos and tips-on-how-to-look-cooler stayed out as well, I was beginning to worry.  
  
I contacted Yuy once and asked him when the last time was that he had heard from Duo and he told me that had been almost two months earlier. However, this was precisely the day before I got that huge assignment from Sally and thus I hardly had time to think about it.  
  
The mission didn't go too bad, we accomplished our goal though it took us nearly three months to get everything done and in that time I had received no e-mail whatsoever from Duo and I hadn't mailed him either, telling myself I was too busy to do that. But then again, a mail only had to take five minutes.  
  
So it was my fault that I didn't take the time to keep my friendship with Maxwell. However I didn't really miss him, since I'd met a girl on the job who worked for the preventors as well and I had fallen in love.  
  
Love can be a dangerous thing, it can really make you blind. This time, not only was I blind towards my girl and did I find no flaw in her whatsoever in those first months, I was also too blind to realise that I still had friends to hang out with and one in particular, whom I had to mail now to get him back.  
  
By the time I realised what I was doing, how much time I actually spent with Katie and how little I heard from anybody else who was not involved with my job, it was too late. After those first blind months, when we finally gave each other some time to breath by not spending every evening either in each other's touching company or else with each other on the phone anymore, I hadn't heard from Maxwell in six months and Winner had been gone even longer.  
  
Of course, the latter was never gone for real as we saw his face on TV every now and then. I even found whole school projects on the guy, telling how he was only fifteen when he officially took over his father's business and how since then he had only made more money. We read about how he spent lots of money on charity and other events, how his company sponsored several sportsmen and sport teams and how he helped some companies save themselves from going under. That guy was always busy, so it was easier to let him go.  
  
Maxwell, on the other hand, was a case not so simple. I had lost the guts to admit my failing him and thus I didn't dare to mail. I had always taken it for granted that he was the one to keep in contact and to let me know how the other guys were doing and suddenly, I had no idea what anyone was up to anymore. Was Barton still with the circus when he kept postponing his plans to leave? Was Yuy still a guard to Relena or had she found herself a husband yet? Well, I figured the latter one out pretty easily since everyone kept talking about the beautiful twenty-two-year-old single woman with more power and class than any other girl her age and the press loved hunting her down to scoop pictures of her with any guy and make it into yet another sappy gossip that she was engaged or something. Honestly, how people could still believe that crap was beyond me.  
  
And Maxwell? Did he pass his third year and make it to his fourth and final year in college or did he fail as he feared he might?  
  
I decided to wait for my birthday in December, knowing the braided one never missed a chance to congratulate anyone, but nothing came. Christmas went by without a word from the guy, same happened with new year.  
  
It was now AC202 and Katie and I had broken up somewhere between my birthday and Christmas after a huge fight probably over something small since I can't remember it anymore. Suddenly I realised that I was indeed all alone. I hadn't spoken to Heero or Trowa either and without knowing it, I too had been on my way out of the group.  
  
When I heard from Sally that she had a job for Heero, I wasted no time offering myself to inform him, even though normally I didn't take such easy jobs. Sally, always seeing right trough me, let me take this opportunity and I went to contact Heero. I decided to discuss details over a drink in a nearby bar and there we met. However, it didn't take long for me to realise that he had been closing himself down again.  
  
He was always hard to hang out with, Heero Yuy. It took time for him to come and trust you, but we got there during the war, even to a point where he allowed himself to rely on me, on any of us pilots. After the war, when he didn't need to do that so much anymore, he took a step back, but Maxwell got him to stay close to us anyway. As we talked, though he tried to hide it, I saw that the loss of contact with the braided pilot had done him more harm than good. He really missed the presence of that boy he once called 'friend' before he had called anyone else just that. They'd had such a deep friendship, deeper even than I thought it had been, and here I was, sitting with Yuy, seeing the pain it caused him to even hear the boy's name.  
  
Anger rose in me, anger at the braided boy who had not carried out his duty, his mission to keep the five of us together. I see now how stupid it was of me to assume that he would do all the work while we just got annoyed by him and told him more than once to stop. Because when he did stop, non of us took over.  
  
After that one job, I lost contact with Heero as well when I got transferred to some colony far away to do my work from there. I had never been best friends with Barton, in fact, he was the only one I didn't really try to keep in contact with in the first place, so now I realised I had lost them all. Quatre was the first of us to jump out and his doing that had scattered us all. We meant nothing if we weren't all five of us together.  
  
Nine years back, I met a girl, Kayo and five years ago we got married. Next week is our first lustrum feast and for that occasion, I had tried to seek contact with Duo Maxwell again, hoping that he would forgive my foolishness and help me in my attempt to get the five of us together again. This action was inspired by my pregnant wife, who had lost her parents last year. She told me I would regret it if I didn't do it, and she was right.  
  
My hacking skills weren't as good as they once were when I was eighteen or so, but still I knew enough to find out that he no longer had an e-mail address. Every trace of him I could find ended somewhere within the last five years when he was teaching at a college somewhere in America. At that time he was married to his first-ever girlfriend, Hilde Schbeiker, whom he had lost contact with at the age of 17, but obviously ran into ten years later.  
  
What happened to Maxwell, I don't know. Maybe he changed his identity, maybe he turned out to be gay, divorced Hilde, married a man and took his last name, or maybe he simply didn't want to be found. I couldn't track him down and now I have regrets. If only I had tried this thirteen years ago, if only I hadn't allowed him to not keep in touch, if only... but it is too late. Maxwell is nowhere to be found and I dare not contact any of the others, out of fear of finding the same results.  
  
Oh Nataku, such a coward I have become!  
  
_Chang Wufei. Pilot 05 of Nataku  
  
AC 215 November 6th._


	4. Come What May

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing  
  
Title: Broken Ties  
  
Author: little princess  
  
Archive: fanfiction.net mediaminer.og my personal website and GWFF yahoo group  
  
Rating: PG13  
  
Warnings: Friendship fic and I guess Angst. Talk about loved ones death in the last chapter yet not really a death fic I guess.  
  
Pairings: it's a friendship fic, no real pairings, just the mention that they moved on and got married (non-yaoi) to OC's who don't play a big part here.  
  
Summary: At the end of Endless Waltz, we are left not knowing what will happen to the gw boys. In this version, they remain friends for a couple of years, but in the end, their friendship seems to die like most friendships you have at such a young age do.

---  
Come What May  
  
Then end of the war brought difficulties for me. I had never expected to survive it, not even after I'd blown myself up and found out I was still alive. After the war in 195 I had no idea of what to make of my life and I took the incident at the end of 196 as another chance to die. But I didn't succeed, I didn't die, I survived. And now I had to stay alive with no reason or meaning in the world at all.  
  
It was this knowledge, the emptiness I'd felt between the two wars, that made my decision to do as Relena had asked and become part of her bodyguards easier. At the least it was something to do, giving me less time to think about why I could possibly have survived.  
  
Duo was the one who kept in contact by spamming us all the time, doing stupid things just to get some attention. But he was also the one who actually stopped by my place now and then and at those times we almost seemed like normal friends. How he saw it, I don't know, maybe it was just plain obvious to anyone, but I found it hard to let all my conditioning go. Whenever we were in a restaurant, I would know everyone's exact spot, what they wore, whom they were with, when they entered and left and even what they'd ordered. If a man in a suit went behind the scenes, I was suspicious, thinking that he might be a drugs dealer or some other kind of threat when he could just as well have been the manager of the place.  
  
Duo noticed, he was the only one who noticed and he offered to help me socialise with people in order to become less suspicious. Strangely enough, this helped. I began to realise not everybody had something evil going on in their minds, I learned what normal meant and knowing that, I became more and more aware that I was overreacting. Our faces had been shown to the public, but our names had not and a face is something people tend to forget. Especially when said face has a history like ours.  
  
Thanks to Duo I saw how foolish I was, looking back all the time, scowling at everybody I saw on the streets, as if daring them to try something. I stopped pushing people away and it became easier for me to do my job, as Relena's other guards started to trust me now that I was no longer so suspicious of them.  
  
Quatre's departure was perhaps inevitable, as he was so different from the rest of us. He was at the top before any of us had even begun making our way up and sooner or later I knew he was going to leave us be. I expected it and, returning to my training even though Duo had tried so hard to train it all out of me, I kept my distance. When he didn't show up for that Christmas dinner, saying he had work to do, I knew it was over and I was ready to accept that.  
  
However, when Duo started to distance himself from me soon after, that was something I was not prepared for. Granted, I was glad that my mailbox was no longer overloaded with crap every other day, but I missed the presence of his normal mails as well. Just those simple mails like 'hi, how are ya? I'm good, why wouldn't I be? Just wanted to let you know that there's this new hair die on the market, it's purple and I think it would suit Trowa with his circus outfit. Bye. Duo' Those mails were crazy, but I loved them and had all of them stored in a document, even though I hardly ever replied to any of his, what I referred to others to as 'nonsense'.  
  
But Duo's mails stopped coming every day, soon it was reduced to a simple one-liner once a week and one week, even that didn't come. I waited the next week for that mail that would state he was ok, but seven days later, my mailbox was still empty of a word from Duo. And the week after that, no mail again, same happened the week after that. And the week after that. And the week after that. I knew he was alive, Wufei had called me once, asking me when the last time was that I'd gotten word from Duo and he told me it had been a few weeks with him as well. Obviously he was abandoning us.  
  
I didn't know how to deal with this. Duo wasn't one of those people who would one day disappear on you, he was just one of those who would always be there. So when he went I knew it was the end of the five of us as friends and I knew my life would never be the same.  
  
I stayed as Relena's guard for a couple more years, making more than enough money and having no means of how to spend it. So when I was twenty-nine and I wanted a year off the work to think for myself what I wanted next, I could afford it. However, that choice hadn't been as good for me as I'd thought. Again, I had too much time on my hands to think and too few contacts to spend time with. Last of the boys I had been in contact with was Trowa, who had mailed me that he had finally left the circus, but that was over a year ago. The last of them I'd actually seen was Wufei, a few years before when I had another job at the preventors and Wufei was the one to inform me. We had talked a bit then, but hadn't bothered to keep in contact afterwards.  
  
So when I quit as Relena's guard I had almost no friends left and absolutely nothing to do. The first few weeks were pretty good, I finally had time to surf the net a little, learn some new stuff, see what was really going on in the world, but soon enough I was bored with that as well. Yes, I actually got bored with my laptop!  
  
That was when my life went all the way downhill.  
  
I started going out at night, getting drunk more often than not. I met some people in the pubs I hung out with, had the occasional one-night-stands, wasted my money on those trips out and got no happier at all.  
  
And then there was this one woman I ended up in bed with after a long day and a lot of alcohol. I didn't even know her last name when we were together to relieve some stress, but I found it out two months later when she showed up on my doorstep, pregnant with my daughter, telling me that not only did I have the right to know, but also the obligation to pay up.  
  
So, now I was forced to get my life back together again if I wanted to cough up the money I would have to pay. However, I told her that I wanted to see the child as well if I paid for her and somehow I ended up as a weekend-father to a little girl named Nancy  
  
It was a lot of work, making sure I had a stable house for my daughter so that the judge wouldn't take her from me and it was weird to hear her call me 'dad' when I'd never had a father or a mother to begin with. But I got used to having a daughter and even started looking forward to every other weekend she'd spend at my place. I cared for her in a way that I had never cared for anyone, but I allowed myself to experiment on this area, because I knew I could afford to fail. She always had her mother left if I screwed up one night, right?  
  
However, when she was eight and her mother died, the girl suddenly came into my full care and I lacked the friends to tell me what to do. First things first, I arranged a babysitter for her since I worked five days a week. Then I realised that suddenly I had to spend much more money than I was used to, but I could still afford it. I had a good job as head of security, not at Relena's place, but at some other governmental building. By the time my daughter was thirteen, I figured she was old enough to be on her own one day a week, so I started working the Saturdays as well. I knew the nightshift paid better and they'd asked me for that, but I didn't think it was responsible for a little girl to be alone at night, she seemed so fragile sometimes. So I didn't take the offer and instead used the extra payment for that weekend day to pay for her school. I could've tried living in an apartment that cost half of what mine cost, but I liked to live where I did, liked the building, liked the part of the city and hated moving for her sake as well as mine.  
  
My daughter Nancy turned fifteen a few days ago but I wasn't there for her, I had to work. It was on a Saturday, so she wasn't up yet when I got up and thus I left a gift for her at the dining table before I headed to work. She wasn't home when I got back, but had left a piece of paper for me, telling me shortly that she was out with friends. The gift was gone, but not mentioned in the note and I didn't hear her come back in until midnight, when I had already gone to bed. I rarely stay up these days.  
  
It pains me to see the relationship between me and my daughter and it is those times I spend thinking of her that I wished I at least still had Duo here with me. When I was fifteen I was so different from what Nancy is now, she is so care-free, a real girl in puberty, wanting to be able to be on her own, yet incapable of discipline herself enough to even clean her room every now and then. She is a beautiful young girl, but I have no way of getting trough to her. I don't understand her world. For me, love was a luxury I couldn't afford and I never really dated at all. But she goes out with boys, claiming to be 'so in love' all the time. What should I do with that?  
  
I try hard, I know I please her when I take her to an ice hockey game now and then as she is crazy about that sport and on Sundays, my only day off I try my best to cook something she likes and to be there for her, but more often than not is she out with friends all day and doing some last-minute homework at night. On a school night she is not allowed out after nine o'clock and seeing how she is only fifteen and not yet at the legal age to drink or even be in a pub, her curfew is midnight in the weekends. She has her allowance and some extra money to buy her own clothes, but besides that I know that too often I slip her a few extra bucks anyway, as if that way I could win her approval.  
  
Parenting is so hard. It's more than just setting up a curfew and some rules, but I don't really know what else I can do. We hardly talk, I'm glad I can manage talking to people my age, but teenagers are not adults and I can't connect with her.  
  
I look at her and long for a friend –I hear a whisper naming this friend Duo– who can teach me how to be a good father. I miss my friends from back then whom I know could have helped me and I find myself often thinking if only Duo had been here, then I could ask him what to do and he'd help me out, maybe give me some examples as to how I could get closer to my daughter. But Duo broke contact so many years ago. I have no idea where he is or what he's up to, I know nothing of the people I met during the war. I never wanted them to stop 'hanging out' with me, but I never found the right words to tell them, I never knew what to say anyway.  
  
Even though I care more about Nancy than I'd ever deemed possible, if I could do things over again, I probably wouldn't have had her. I would've said something, anything to keep Duo from leaving, no matter how humiliating it would have been and I would never have allowed myself to get so down after I quit as Relena's guard.  
  
No, life wouldn't have looked like this at all, had Duo still been here, had any of them still been here... Though I guess the only one I can blame for not keeping in contact is myself. After all, I never said a word.  
  
_Heero Yuy. Pilot 01 of Wing Zero  
AC224 March 8th._


	5. Forever Lost

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing

Title: Broken Ties

Author: little princess

Archive: my personal website and GWFF yahoo group

Rating: PG13

Warnings: Friendship fic and I guess Angst. Talk about loved ones death in this last chapter, yet not really a death fic I guess.

Pairings: it's a friendship fic, no real pairings, just the mention that they moved on and got married (non-yaoi) to OC's who don't play a big part here.

Summary: At the end of Endless Waltz, we are left not knowing what will happen to the gw boys. In this version, they remain friends for a couple of years, but in the end, their friendship seems to die like most friendships you have at such a young age do.

_---__  
  
__Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,   
Old time is still a-flying.   
And this same flower that smiles today,   
Tomorrow will be dying.  
_  
**Robert Herrick (1591-1674)  
  
**  
Forever Lost  
  
The year was After Colony 243, date: October 7th, the weather was cold, but dry.  
  
I was dressed in black, as I was on my way to a rather unhappy occasion. Five days ago, the paper announced that Quatre Rebarba Winner, president of the Winner corporation and several other institutes I did not bother learning to recite, had died of a heart attack on October 1st at the age of sixty-three.  
  
I was here, at his funeral, to pay my last respects to the man I had once known as just a boy.  
  
There were a lot of people at the funeral, so many that even his family was shielded from my sight as well as that of the many reporters and photographers. I deliberately kept my distance. I hadn't even wanted to be here in the first place.  
  
During my ride on the highways, still damp from yesterday's heavy rainfall I had tried to recall some memories of those times as a gundam pilot in the war, of those times afterwards, but only little had shown. Heero, the perfect warrior, who had committed suicide more than once, failing each time. Duo, the ever-cheerful weirdest of the group –though non of us could really be called normal– with his braid that reached over his butt. Wufei, who was always ranting about women and injustice, but who, nevertheless always had the most female friends of us all. The one who had got his revenge on Treize Kushrenada, our enemy from the very start. And of course Quatre, the first friend I ever had and the first one to leave the group after six years, the one who could plot and lie like no other, this mainly strengthened by he fact that he always seemed innocent, too innocent to tell a lie.  
  
But much more than these vague sketches hadn't come up. No particular events, no pictures in my head of all of us together, not even a memory of the many fights we had fought, or even the memory of their voice.  
  
I had no photographs of my past, I didn't like them, I didn't like the idea of lies being trapped in a frame, the idea of seeing people happy when I knew that only days after that picture was taken, their happiness was wiped away before their very own eyes. Dwelling on the past was futile, I hadn't even wanted to come here today and hadn't gone here if my sister, Catherine hadn't made me.  
  
I felt sorry for my wife, now, standing here. Leisha was home alone now and I knew she hated being alone. She was sixty, three years younger than I was and I knew she always regretted the fact that she couldn't have children with me. We had tried, but I turned out to be sterile and by the time we filed for adoption, we had reached our forties and were deemed too old. I had always blamed myself for this, even though she said it was alright, that our love could exist without children as well, but every time I was forced to leave her alone for more than a couple of hours, I felt guilty at what I saw as was my fault.  
  
However, like Cathy, she had encouraged me to go here, and I could only guess why I always let myself be persuaded so easily by those two women I cared for most. So now here I was, leaning against a tree, watching the crowd in front of me, every now and then catching a glimpse of pale blonde, almost white hair, that, I realised, belonged to the Winner family.  
  
I listened to the words of a man who spoke of the loss of a good man to his family, to his people, to everyone else, but I barely registered the words. I wasn't crying, I was emotionless once again, that mask I thought I had buried long ago, slipping back in place again as I was in the presence of the time I wore it, even if that presence was now dead.  
  
Suddenly I heard a raspy voice on my left. "Barton? Trowa Barton?"  
  
I looked at the source of the voice and saw a slightly tinted man, with his approximately 163 cm I was 13 centimetres taller than him. His blue coat was too small to cover all of his dark sweater and his pants hung droopily around his legs, half covering the white shoes he wore beneath that.  
  
His hair was greying, like mine, only his was darker, showing that it had once been either dark-brown or black. His eyebrows were thick and heavy, drawing attention away from the small, dark eyes that adorned his face. He had a small, grey beard, combed flat, though a few hairs refused their masters wishes and stuck out anyway. His face showed only a few wrinkles and he looked no older than fifty, though I knew that he was at least sixty- two.  
  
"Wufei Chang?" The smaller man nodded. Besides aging, Wufei hadn't changed that much. He still looked as if he weighed not more than a feather, even though he was wearing a sweater and a coat. He was still small and his eyes still held that sparkle of pleasure. And he still flexed his right hand when he was nervous, I noticed amused. It seemed inappropriate to smile I a place like this, so I kept my face straight.  
  
"How are you?" I asked, by lack of inspiration.  
  
"Good, good." He answered softly. "Married, father of three, you?"  
  
"Couldn't get children." I replied, my voice monotonously. Wufei had never been my best friend, but he was one of us nevertheless. However, after so many years, I was not prepared to immediately share all my emotions with him.  
  
"Oh." He replied and bowed his head a little in respect. Then he turned to the grave, watching the crowd.  
  
"forty-two years since we were all together last." He sighed, as the we saw one of the family members of the Winner house rise onto a stone so that his head stuck out over the crowd. I recognised the man from TV as Quatre's eldest son, who was taller than his father had been, though Quatre, with his 170 centimetres wasn't small himself. I only saw his back, but even like that he looked like Quatre. Olivier was thirty-seven or thirty-eight, I knew and wasn't supposed to fully take over the business until his fortieth birthday. However, the recent events would certainly change that.  
  
"And now we never will be again." I added, as the blonde man began to speak, his voice wavering slightly as he spoke not of Mr. Winner the businessman, but as Quatre, the father who prepared his son for a life as a leader.  
  
"So, when did you get married?"  
  
There was a short pause as he watched the blonde. "Two-ten About a month before my thirtieth birthday. You?"  
  
"I was Twenty-eight." I answered. "Met her trough my sister three-and-a- half years earlier."  
  
"How is Catherine doing?"  
  
"She's fine, healthy and all. Grandmother of seven already, numbers eight is due in two months, number nine half a month later."  
  
"She must love that."  
  
"Yeah, she's great with children." Then I looked at Wufei. "And how are you. What did you do after the preventors stopped?"  
  
Wufei looked dreamingly. "Bought a piece of land back in old China. I married Kayo there and we built a dojo where I started teaching in my ancestor's name. My youngest one, my son, will take over after me, though my daughters were taught there as well."  
  
I knew it had always been Wufei's dream to have a place where he could teach in his ancestor's name and I was glad for him that he had managed it. Slowly, memories were slipping back to me of some of the more serious times together. Like when we were eighteen and we all sat around the table and sulkily, because outside it rained and we told each other what we wanted in the future, all speaking in a tone as if we were talking to nobody at all.  
  
I remembered how Quatre wished for a wife he loved for real and not just for public. To him, that kind of relationship wasn't worth anything. He was the kind of guy that would give everything up if only he found the right person. And he had. His wife, Camilia, was a beautiful brunette when she was young, and even now she looked ten years younger than her true age told. She was a good mother from what I'd seen on the news and I knew hat Quatre wouldn't have taken her if he weren't certain about the relationship.  
  
Quatre had been a fine person.  
  
Unaware that I had spoken these words aloud, I turned my head when Wufei sighed and confirmed. "He could be devious as Duo, though. I never did find out whether it was Duo or Quatre who hid my katana under the house, causing it to get all wet and dirty after lying there for a month." I chuckled at the memory of that little prank, but Wufei didn't seem to like it so much. "Could throw the thing away. And it had been a present too!"  
  
"That was Duo." Said a voice from behind us. "Though Quatre found out and didn't tell."  
  
Both Wufei and I turned around to face a man somewhere between my height and Wufei's The hair around ears was white and he wore a brown hat to cover up the baldness on top of the head. Thick glasses stood in front of the cobalt-blue eyes that once stood proudly as if they could skin you alive, small eye-brows raised a little above the glasses. The face looked wrinkly and old, cheeks were slightly rounded and his lips were thin and drawn into a tight line.  
  
He wore a brown coat that matched his hat and black pants that looked as if they were at least thirty years old and had recently hung in the mud. The nose of his black shoes stuck out under the pants, making his feet look even bigger than they already were. I shook my head slightly. Heero never was good when it came to clothes.  
  
"Yuy?" Wufei was the first to voice his name. "You look..." old was the right word, gained weight too, but Wufei kept himself from saying that. Finally he settled with "different."  
  
"J's experiments." He explained quickly. Months later he explained to us that in order to make him in that condition at the age of fifteen, sacrifices had to be made, in this case, J sacrificed his life span, not expecting him to outlive the war anyway.  
  
"Chang, Barton." He nodded at the both of us, showing he recognised us. "How are you these days?" We soon found out that Heero had one daughter, Nancy, a brunette who didn't want a family herself.  
  
The tree of us watched together how people placed flowers on the coffin and how the wooden box got lowered into the ground. Non of us spoke as we witnessed all of this, non of us had brought anything to give Quatre into his grave. The people started slowly moving away, when suddenly a boy around the age of fifteen appeared. No doubt he was Quatre's grandson, he looked exactly like what Quatre had looked like when he was that age, only darker clothes, but the same innocent face, the same pale hair, the same bright blue eyes, even the same voice when he spoke.  
  
"I'm looking for Trowa Barton, Wufei Chang and Heero Yuy." He said, looking up questioningly.  
  
I nodded as Wufei spoke. "That's us."  
  
"I have something- m-my grandfather wanted you to have it. I-it's not in his will, but he asked me to find you and g-give it." His voice wavered as he tried to fight his tears in front of us. Brave a Quatre, this young man was. Only then did I see that he was carrying a paper bag, which he now held out for us to take.  
  
Wufei smiled sadly at the boy as he took the bag from him and the child turned away and ran back to his parents where he was scolded for running off like that. It was sad, being scolded for acting your age.  
  
"What about Duo?" Heero voiced my thoughts as I, too, had realised Duo was the only one missing. "He only mentioned us three."  
  
Suddenly, Wufei turned his eyes down as if he was going to confess something bad. "Duo died in an accident thirty-one years ago, when he was thirty-two." Neither Heero nor I knew what to say as we both looked up in shock. "He had a motor accident, Hilde contacted me after I'd been trying to locate Duo near my lustrum wedding feast. They'd been married."  
  
That came as a great shock, Duo dead all this time and Heero nor I knew about this. Wufei had known, though, that was why ex-pilot 02 wasn't here. Quatre had known too, how? And how could he have known we would be here? Had he felt it? Had he known we'd be drawn to this place once we learned of his death? But that had come so sudden! I stared at the bag Wufei was holding How had he known he would die? His heart-attack came so sudden and he was still years below the average age, he was still young, how had he known? And what was in there?  
  
Defeated, we walked past the grave as all the others had left and we paid our respects there, painfully. Then we took Heero's car to a coffee-shop, where we opened the bag that had been left to us. It was a thick photo album, inside was a letter, handwritten by Quatre himself, written to us:  
  
_'Dear Heero, Trowa and Wufei.  
  
When you read this, I will be gone. However, I cannot go before I have offered you my apologies for screwing everything up so many years ago. I should never have left you like that, you did not deserve it. So often did I think back of those times we were together. The Maganacs were adults guiding me, but you were my first real friends and some of the best I had. I have few regrets in my life, but losing you is one of the greatest. I know I'm going to die, I feel it, though I cannot explain it. I am not sad, I lived a happy life. There used to be so much out there that I wanted to do when we were fifteen, but I understand now that life is full of not's and nevers. However, I would not have been the same, had our friendship been one of those nevers as well. It is too late to make up with Duo now, but I pray it is not too late for you. When you meet at my funeral, which I somehow know you will all attend, I will have my grandson give you this book, which I want you to have. It contains all the best pictures of the five of us together, remembering those few times I felt truly free and alive. Please keep it and look at it and remember the good times as I do, for all that has happened can not be taken from us anymore.  
  
I thank you for being my friend back then and hope that you can one day forgive me for my mistakes.  
  
Quatre R. Winner, Pilot 04 of Sandrock  
  
AC243, September 19th.'  
_  
  
That day the three of us looked at the pictures together and laughed as we remembered all those good times we had. The words Quatre had spoken in his letter reminded me that pictures do not only hold lies and fake happiness, but also those times we were truly happy, even if that happiness lasted no longer than a day. That much could never be taken from us anymore.  
  
It held so many pictures, the book just didn't seem to have an end. There were pictures of all of us together, pictures of just a few of us, pictures of funny moments, pictures we didn't even know were made, like that one where Wufei was looking for his sword. Duo, all dressed up in a Santa suit, his beard not correctly tied so one side let loose after awhile. Heero, covered in food, trying to glare the camera to death, myself in some new outfit Duo just had to photograph me in, but my head was not in the picture because I was too tall and Duo justified it by saying how my face didn't wear any clothes anyway. Quatre, from the side, a smile on his face as he was watching something his father would never have approved of, had he known what his son had been doing.  
  
Yes, we sat and remembered and it was well past ten o'clock that night when we finally parted, leaving our addresses, phone numbers and e-mails behind so we wouldn't loose sight of each other again.  
  
This was all twenty-two years ago. I am now the only remaining gundam pilot left. Wufei, Heero and I kept in contact this time without the help of the two positive boys who both died too young. Every year on the date of Quatre's burial, we sat down together with the photo album and looked at it, recalling all those memories again. Oh, how thankful we were now and how much we regretted that we had just allowed Quatre to leave like that. But we were old enough to have learned that it was just what happened in time, win some friends, loose some.  
  
Heero died five years after Quatre, simply of old age, but I didn't think he minded much. He couldn't handle the fact that when he was only sixty- five, he already had to use a wheelchair and his hearing seemed to get worse and worse by the day as well, until, in the end, he had gone deaf.  
  
Heero never imagined he'd outlive the war in the first place, but when he did, he tried his best t adjust. His life, from what I've heard mostly, had been a good one, though difficult as he couldn't accept aging and no longer being in top-condition. However, not once did he speak ill about doctor J and his experiments, even though he had every right to do so, as they had made him into what he was and could not accept. Heero was a proud man, as his daughter had written on his tombstone when he died.  
  
Wufei lived longer, he died last year when he was eighty-three. These days that is still a year below the average age of 84 which men seem to reach, but Wufei never seemed to care. He got sick with a recently discovered virus a year prior to his death and in the last weeks of his life, no-one above the age of sixty or below the age of ten was allowed near him anymore, for if they touched the body juices that had been coming out from every opening the human body has, they would be at risk as well. His wife, his friends, his great-grandson and I, we were no longer allowed to be with him and his daughters, son and grandchildren all had to dress up in special clothes before they were allowed to enter.  
  
Wufei never got to touch his great-granddaughter. Who was born two weeks before his death and that little fact pained him so much, that I decided to enter the glass globe he was placed in anyway, no longer caring about getting sick myself. I was eighty-four now, but when I was fifteen, I could never have imagined myself reaching this age. So when the doctors were out of sight, I took some protective clothing and entered the globe with a picture of the new-born girl stuffed in my pocket. For a moment I felt fifteen again, as if I was breaking in to an enemies base to save a fellow- pilot from the evil doctors and in a way, that was exactly what I had done many times. Back then I had teamed up with the enemy several times, to destroy them from the inside. This tactic, I figured, wouldn't work so well anymore, now that I was showing my age, so I chose another path instead  
  
Wufei didn't allow me to touch him and I could understand that, but for half an hour we talked about this girl who looked so much like her mother, Wufei's granddaughter had looked when she had just been born.  
  
I'd been inside for twenty minutes before the doctors realised what was going on, but I ignored them as the spoke trough the intercom if I would kindly remove myself from the patient's side, for my own safety. Ten minutes later, three doctors entered the globe and I had no choice but to leave, though it felt as if I got arrested. Yet, before they had dragged me all the way out, I smiled at Wufei and mouthed him a 'mission accomplished'.  
  
I refused to be screened for the decease Wufei had and till this day, I have not yet found a single trace of the illness. If I got it, I will discover it later, rather than having years stolen from me by endless trips to hospitals I despise anyway. My wife understands this and she supports me, even when I tell her that I'd rather die five weeks earlier than spend my last minutes in a globe like Wufei, not being allowed to kiss and touch and hug my wife goodbye.  
  
She understands me completely and tells me often enough that she will be with me all the way, no matter what, as she knows I will be with her as well. When she says that, I can do nothing more than kiss her and thank her and hold her, hoping that we will spend our last years in all the luck we have spent life in so far.  
  
Quatre's photo album stands on the nightstand on my side, the original note, unfortunately, I lost, but I had it typed over in my computer. And often, when my wife is asleep, I take the album and glance in it, remembering the four friends with whom I helped save the world. People can take my money, take my childhood, take anything from my present life, but they can not take my past and they can not take the memories I have stored deep down inside of me.  
  
It's funny how, when you're young, you have so many friends and you think you'll always stay together, when later on only so few are left. Even those who left some pretty deep footprints in your life can be gone only a few years later.  
  
I finger the carved front of the green album, just before I put out the bed light and pull the covers over my head.  
  
Ah, those good old days.  
  
And I crawl closed to my Leisha, seeking her warmth with my body as I hold her tightly in my arms.  
  
_Trowa Barton. Pilot 03 of Heavyarms.  
  
AC265 September 9th.  
_  
-The End-

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just a little note here, thanks everyone for reviewing! Lots of you commented that this is indeed different from most fics for the simple reason that here the pilots do not remain friends but grow apart. As this had been my main idea all along, i'm glad you could appreciate it anyway. I thought for sure I would get flamed by some people because I didn't keep the boys together. 

I'm glad you enjoyed this story so much and I'm also happy that, though for 3 of the pilots I'd never before written in their POV, it turned out pretty nice. I don't see this last chapter as a too happy ending, as there was no big reunion of the five of them. But I had to make a difference with Trowa's chapter or I figured it would be too much of a bore. Please tell me if you've enjoyed this ending instead and any comments are always welcome.


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